


These Wings Will Fly

by Alienea



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Wingfic, implied childhood abuse, mentions of Marcus Bell, mentions of Moran, mentions of Moriarty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alienea/pseuds/Alienea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's wings are a sick matte black, and Joan always want to know what her client's wings used to look like</p><p>Sherlock thinks Joan's wings are remarkable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Wings Will Fly

 

Joan wonders, sometimes, what Sherlock's wings were like before the drugs, what colour the black slowly washed through and overcame. Occasionally she thinks his wings would have been the loud, expressive colors of tropical parrots, and sometimes she thinks they might've already been black, but the glossy black of ravens, with hints of purple and green in the right light, instead of the sick matte they are now. She figures that someday, if she doesn't switch careers again, if Sherlock manages to avoid being killed by an irate client or criminal, she'll discover the answer.

 

Sherlock thinks that Joan's wings are the most perfect match he has ever seen, tucked into her body close and tight, and easily mistaken for a small bird, perhaps a wren or a mockingjay, before she stretches them out and _oh_ , they’re majestic and some of the largest he's seen for someone Joan's size, and the most beautiful wings he's seen. By the time she's gone from an unwanted helper monkey to a friend and partner, he realizes she doesn't think her wings are extraordinary. Her entire family has small wings, prey bird wings, and he wonders how Joan could ever have been born in that family.

 

Joan stops Sherlock from bullying other people with his wings, using them to take up more space than any one person should be able to, and flashing them like he remembers when they would be able to confuse someone long enough for him to see the evidence, get a fumbled sentence out of someone to disprove their whole story, and sometimes she catches him looking confused as all they do is look sympathetic for his feathers, matte black and ungroomed. Sometimes she wants to preen his feathers until they lie flat and neat instead of in a disorderly mass that goes in every direction, and wonders how he can be comfortable like that.

 

Sherlock almost never sees Joan use her wings to intimidate someone, and the only times he's seen it's always been for someone else's benefit. She uses her wings in so many unorthodox ways, managing to comfort someone in a nest of her feathers or to fight, using them as the extensions of herself that they are, and she always carefully preens them afterwards. She can use her wings to fly, and that fact saved Sherlock once and he has no desire for it to happen again. Joan's anger had almost made him wish she couldn't fly, like the majority of the populace, grounded with wings too small, too unpracticed, for flight. He wonders if his wings will ever be able to carry him in flight again. He wonders, sometimes, what would have happened if he hadn't fallen.

 

Joan catches color sneaking back into Sherlock's wings one day, small streaks of grey and red towards the small of his back, and smiles for the rest of the day, and refuses to tell Sherlock why. For the next few days, until Bell comes by with a case, she catches his wings twitching in frustration as he stares at her, and that makes her smile more, because she knows that as long as his wings are moving with his emotions, she doesn't have to worry. She remembers what happened with Moriarty and her drab outer wings with the jewel-bright colors on the undersides, and how his wings were perfectly still during that and when he first caught Moran. She wonders what happened between him and his father, exactly, to still his wings when he talks about his childhood.

 

Sherlock notices the way Joan's wings continually curve towards him after Moriarty, and even more so after the bridge, and he wonders if she noticed, and if this means she does not regret what happened after, that they refuse to talk about.

 

Joan wonders how much more obvious she has to be.

 

Sherlock takes great delight in lying in bed in the morning, when he's awake and Joan is still asleep, carefully fixing all the feathers she ruffled during sleep. Sometimes he rearranges them into careful patterns which she takes great care not to disturb for the rest of the day, but occasionally ruins when she wakes up in the morning and all her feathers puff out in relaxation, and she sighs in contentment as he continues to preen her wings.

 

Joan watches color as it seeps its way back into Sherlock's wings in the night and the day, and wonders when he'll notice. Sometimes, in the middle off the night, she'll preen those feathers over and over, hoping nothing will stop their growth and slow usurping of the matte black, but she's given up on Sherlock ever caring much about his wings' grooming.

 

Sherlock finally notices. He realizes this is what Joan had been waiting for him to notice, every time she smiled and said he would figure it out. He bakes, and they have small celebration.

 

Joan realizes, one sleepily content morning, that she's entirely content with her madhouse of a life.

  
Sherlock smiles when she says this, and drags her out of bed for the next case. 

**Author's Note:**

> I never ever decided on what bird Joan gets her wings from. One day I will! Sherlock's got the wings of Congo African Grey Parrot. They're very, very smart birds and if you don't provide them with stimulus and new experiences they'll start to pluck their feathers and other self-destructive bird behaviors. They also tend to make a lot of noise and mess.
> 
> I had someone look over this but considering we had both just finished a trans-pacific flight, there are probably still mistakes feel free to point those out


End file.
